Right around 2006, the Schaper family routinely hosted pizza nights for friends in the St. Louis area. One night, a regular couldn’t make it, and he asked for a pizza to be frozen so he could eat it later. That seemingly everyday interaction turned out to be the catalyst for Dogtown Pizza, a line that’s true to the origins and principles of St. Louis pizza.
Things started small, but before long, Rick Schaper and his wife, Meredith, had their first building and were cranking out 100 pizzas per day. Today, the Schapers are in their third building, as are their three sons. Austin is a General Manager, Shane is a Production Manager and Rick is Food Safety and Budgetary Manager.
The family recently realized they needed to automate some of their handmade processes to save time and get more pizzas out the door. The younger Rick was put in charge of finding a conveyor partner, and he got put in touch with Eaglestone.
The rest is history. 30 pizzas per minute (over 10,000 per day) are now flying out the Dogtown door.
Hang on. What exactly is St. Louis pizza?
Great question. It’s important to cover this before we get into our conveyor prowess. The first staple is the crust. It’s light on yeast and results in a super thin, kind of cracker-like crunch. St. Louis sauce is typically on the sweeter side, although Rick says Dogtown’s sauce skews savory.
Next is the cheese. St. Louis pizza mashes up cheddar, swiss and provolone into something known as provel, then adds some smoke flavor to top it off. It’s a very creamy and tangy cheese.
Last, and probably most important: God help you if you slice your St. Louis pizza into wedges. You need to slice it into squares.
The sudden need for Eaglestone
For well over a decade, Dogtown Pizza was 100% handmade. Rick, who grew up watching his parents on the job, has experience that goes well beyond his tenure as Food Safety and Budgetary Manager. So when it came time to automate the sauce and cheese portion of the process, he dove in.
“In our previous building, there was a conveyor system in place. Without naming names, I can tell you it wasn’t great,” Rick said. “When we started planning the production lines for our current building, I got put in touch with Eaglestone.”
The challenge, Rick told us, is he and Eaglestone had to design a system while Dogtown was still in their old building. “It was all estimated,” he said. “We did our best to get the exact lengths we needed, and thankfully, we nailed it.”
Source: Dogtown PizzaEaglestone quality: immediately apparent
Here at Eaglestone, we’re designers and makers. We take great pride in the custom conveyor systems we build, and each one that ships out has impeccable quality and reliability attached. That was Rick’s experience. “When getting Eaglestone’s equipment, it was immediately way better than our last conveyors,” he said. “The quality was the difference. Before, it was like Little Tykes. We had to replace things, the legs weren’t strong. Eaglestone is the real thing. It’s been years and we haven’t had a single problem yet.”
“You can instantly tell how sturdy the conveyors are. They run so consistently. Pair that with the fair pricing and you can see how it’s been so huge for us. With the former conveyors, we overpaid for under delivery. Not anymore.”
Teaming up
Dogtown worked closely with Eaglestone and our partner, Control Works, to connect everything together. “We really collaborated with Eaglestone throughout. This was a long time coming. We got our first conveyor project started in 2021, kind of the supply chain dark ages. There have been lots of drawings, lots of site visits. Eaglestone has been with us the whole time.” Before installation of Dogtown’s first conveyor system, Rick went up to Eaglestone HQ in the Chicago suburbs for a crash course on operation. He handled the installation himself, standing everything up and running the wiring.
Eaglestone came to Dogtown HQ for the second and third conveyor system installation and training. “Overall, it’s really easy to install and run these systems because Eaglestone communicates so well,” Rick said. “Each system also comes with flash drives that house instructions and best practices.”
The next chapter at Dogtown Pizza
The systems are in place and the pizzas are being made faster than ever before. The current task, Rick says, is growth. “We’ve got production locked down, so much so that we’re currently making too many pizzas. We’re trying to score all the opportunities we can, breaking into more grocers.
“The pizzas don’t stop now. We were making 21 pizzas a minute with our old system. With Eaglestone, it’s 30 per minute. Just about a 50% increase is pretty impressive.”
If you want to see a similar jump in production, do what Dogtown did and get in touch with Eaglestone. We have the pedigree and personalities to ensure you get a conveyor system that’s ideal for you that lasts a long, long time.
